HMS Austerity is a four-masted sailing ship, a gift to the nation from grateful tax dodgers. Obviously, it is not called HMS Austerity; for now, it is has the ghastly corporate name UK Flagship, although it will probably be renamed by a competition, because that is a typical exercise in modern pseudo-democracy. If this is so, my suggestion is HMS Austerity, or else HMS (Lord) Michael Ashcroft, because that sinister Tory paymaster and non-dom is its chief individual backer with a gift of £5m; that, in its entirety, should be reason enough to scuttle HMS Austerity. Personally, I would rather have the missing tax. But philanthropy is the new taxation, and Ashcroft, I suppose, needs to preserve his money – how else could he fund the campaign posters that pictured Gordon Brown saying I Increased The Gap Between Rich And Poor that flew up in marginal constituencies during the last election and defined, perhaps for ever, the true nature of cynicism?

HMS Austerity is particularly beloved of the Daily Mail, which launched a fundraising campaign on Thursday, with a detailed graphic that included a whale and all the paraphernalia that will make HMS Austerity, respectively, a floating university, a marketing device for UK trade, and a VIP party boat, which will, I suspect, prove of enduring interest to Prince Andrew because ships best symbolise two things – tyranny and sleaze – and in Prince Andrew we happily find both. Despite the talk of cadets crawling over the rigging in a frenzy of enthusiasm for the Motherland, HMS Austerity actually sounds like the Scientology vessel You Aren't Getting Out smelted on to Prince Jefri of Brunei's yacht, which was named, memorably, Tits. It is always worth repeating that Tits' lifeboats were called Nipple 1 and Nipple 2; Austerity's lifeboats will hopefully be called (Tax) Cuts and (Benefit) Cuts. The Mail, which is, in its own way, an optimist, ignores the political undercurrent and says that HMS Austerity – or, if we must call it, The UK Flagship – is reminiscent of Darwin's HMS Beagle. This is wrong. HMS Beagle investigated evolution; HMS Austerity is a symbol of reaction.

If you doubt it, remember that HMS Austerity was originally planned as a diamond jubilee present to the Queen, probably because someone leafing through Majesty magazine remembered that the decommissioning of the royal yacht Britannia in 1997 was the only occasion where the Queen has ever been caught crying in public. (A far more suitable gift was the one posited for the silver jubilee, by a Labour wag. He suggested a saddle.) However, a new royal yacht was considered offensive in the era of cuts, Michael Gove and David Willetts, the grinning ministerial cheerleaders, were slapped down and, anyway, was it really necessary?

The Queen's income has risen by 16% since George Osborne scrapped the civil list and replaced it with the sovereign grant, which tags her income to the profits of the crown estate. So HMS Don't Cry In The Rain, Ma'am was rebranded HMS Austerity, and politicians of all parties are now ostentatiously toasting her, presumably because we can use her, as the jubilee flotilla demonstrated, to sail obliviously towards decline. Ed Miliband, in particular, should be ashamed. He doesn't have time to mess around (with billionaires) on boats.

HMS Austerity is irritating because she is part of a new, rather toxic, brand of patriotism, which is a far more effective distraction from the privatisation and destruction of the welfare state than the laughable "big society", which was dead from the day a clever journalist rang Central Office to ask which voluntary organisations David Cameron belonged to and was told they couldn't name a single one. The government, it seems, has regrouped and fallen on sails and circuses to distract and "inspire". You can govern by inspiration or by policy; you cannot do both.

With the royal wedding, the jubilee and now the Olympics ("Sponsored by Coca-Cola"), Britain is wearing ragged bunting. I wouldn't mind HMS Austerity and the anti-intellectual joy she floats on quite so much were the enforcement of this patriotism not so seemingly mandatory; public dissent, even of the silliest kind, is outlawed. This week, three separate events told the populace they must not insult authority; even being near a protest can be fatal (and unpunished), as Ian Tomlinson's family learned. On Wednesday, the high court said the Metropolitan police acted legally when they detained people on the day of the royal wedding on suspicion of planning anti-monarchy protests. (Most repulsively, they were released after "the balcony kiss", the orgasmic symbolism of which we cannot ignore. Kisses cannot legislate. Nor can they think). Some of these protesters were dressed as zombies, which is a rarely used, but still important, right: those behaving like zombies were allowed to proceed, while those dressed as them were not.

Last week also, several graffiti artists were arrested and bailed on condition they avoid public transport, do not own spray paint and do not go near Olympic venues. Because this is a patriotism that will not be teased, which I hope is an indication of its eventual, and judicious, failure. Even so, the waters HMS Austerity sails on are bitter.